European Cybercrime Centre: don’t use free anti malware products

In an interview with the website Information Age, the head of the European Cybercrime Centre states that business and home should invest in good digital security products and shouldn’t use free antivirus/antimalware software. The European Cybercrime Centre is part of Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union.

Head of the organisation Toels Oerting warned during a keynote speech on a digital security conference that cybercrime will skyrocket the coming years. The amount of internet users will rise from 2.7 billion now to 4 billion in 2017 which makes the internet the perfect place for criminals. No longer are they geographically attached to where to commit their crimes, they can now attack users all over the world.

Especially in poor countries there isn’t much law enforcement to find and arrest cyber criminals, while profits easily outnumber monthly wages with often little effort.

According to Oerting new forms of organized ‘cyber facilitated crime ‘ are a major challenge for businesses and the police. In an example he states that the bank of Oman lost $45 million in 2 hours due a hack, while all bank robbers in the United States together stole $35 million last year.

Oerting also argues that it’s important that everyone takes responsibility for buying good quality security products, “we see too often that people are using cheap and easy security solutions. There are no free lunches. If you are getting something for free then you are the product.”